Discussion

Iran’s attacks on Amazon data centers in UAE, Bahrain signal a new kind of war as AI plays an increasingly strategic role, analysts say

whackernews: A new kind of war where people won’t be able to get next day delivery on the 5m USB-C cable that they ordered.

prepend: Isn’t this just Iran trying to hit anything “of value” and it really a strategic target? I doubt they are thinking things through vs just firing off semi randomly.

perfmode: When resources are finite and require precise guidance, why would they fire semi randomly when they can be strategic?

paxys: > The tech industry often talks about “the cloud” as though it were something abstract and untouchable. But the cloud runs on data centers, those data centers have an address, and that address can be hit by a drone.Nominating this as the best opening line I have read in a while.

newsclues: Information and logistics win wars, and you need lots of compute and storage in a modern war.

paxys: Striking public infrastructure is the oldest kind of war there is.The article does raise an important question though - would an AWS data center be considered a civilian target or military?

dragonwriter: Yes, Amazon Retail being the sole significant customer of AWS, I guess?

journal: HN could post the IP address of commenters but they wont.

imglorp: People used to add contact info in their .signature files (!): HTTP, IRC, (etc) and ICBM...

YVoyiatzis: WTF are Amazon’s data centers doung in the UAE? Excuse my ignorance, but why there?

samrus: Latency

unsnap_biceps: I would image data sovereignty is also a big factor.

achille: - local data residency & sovereignty - latency - bandwidth - regulatory climate - competition uae is business friendlyall cloud providers have middle east presencerefineries generate terabytes of sensor data per hourthe population and people there produce and consume a lot of data

samrus: Bro thinks amazon is the onky thing that uses AWS

trhway: Buying an antidrone and even antimissile system like say Pantsir-S1, Skyranger 30 or similar is just few million dollars - peanuts compare to the cost of the datacenter to be protected. Once AMAZN starts doing it for themselves, they will possibly also start air-defense-as-a-service using spare capacity.With all the money and assets and the whole value of business, the Big Tech has already started to move into energy, and i think the defense, starting with self-defense, will be among the nearest-future next domains they will move into.

mc3301: If everyone has an antidrone/antimissile system, then everyone will finally be safe.

trhway: the previous world order based on sovereign states is quickly coming to end. Emerging world order is based on force, and the large corps have more money than many states. The only thing they are missing is the rights of a sovereign entity. Well in a world order driven by force, the rights you have is the rights that you've obtained by force. I think we'll soon see, by analogy with corporate personhood, some version of corporate statehood.

fastball: That is... not what AWS data centers are primarily used for in 2026.

whackernews: You mean they’re not used to sell me cheap Chinese USB-C cables?

esseph: [delayed]

OneMorePerson: I dunno about defense as a service since those are pretty short range systems you mentioned (how would someone go "buy" excess capacity), but datacenters already cluster around common resources (water, etc.) so group buying some equipment to put in a ring around the datacenter area seems like it would be what they do.Yeah the use consumer grade rocket components made SpaceX become viable compared to bloated rocket companies. Short range anti missile systems are not large ordinance, they rely a lot on technology for tracking targeting, and they are not a "weapon" (as in they prevent damage not cause it except inadvertently) so it actually seems like something pretty feasible for a tech company. Build it with consumer grade hardware and you could deploy a ton of them.

etrautmann: On a mobile platform though…Rentable defense is already a thing, but rapidly deployable mini-interceptors like Anduril and many others, or electronic countermeasures could plausibly become much more widespread.